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O’Shea to Serve as Vice Chair of Maryland Innovation Initiative

O’Shea to Serve as Vice Chair of Maryland Innovation Initiative

University of Maryland Vice President and Chief Research Officer Dr. Patrick O’Shea has been named as the vice chair of the Maryland Innovation Initiative. Robert Hallenbeck, vice president of Becton Dickinson Biosciences, was named chair of the organization.

The Maryland Innovation Initiative was created in the General Assembly last year to facilitate technology transfer from universities including University of Maryland, College Park; University of Maryland, Baltimore County; University of Maryland, Baltimore; Johns Hopkins University and Morgan State University. This organization aims to partner leading research universities in Maryland with technology companies to create marketable products and services that will potentially improve the economy and the number of high-tech jobs and companies.

The first two programs of the Maryland Innovation Initiative were also announced. The first, the Innovation Discovery Center, will enable qualifying universities to engage tech commercialization experts, called “site miners” that will encourage collaborations between departments, universities and institutions and will also identify promising technology in order to maximize the commercial potential of Maryland’s scientific discoveries. The second, the Innovation Commercialization Program, will provide funding to support the commercialization of university technologies in three phases. The first phase is pre-commercial translational research, the second phase is commercialization planning and the third phase is early-stage product development. A total of $215,000 in awards is available for a project at an individual university and $270,000 is available for joint projects between universities.